Dear Now Married,

Yesterday was Christmas day and I was thumbing through the writings of ten years ago, seeing what I could work on or not. Ten years ago would have meant our first holiday season together — a meeting of families, traditions, maybe even lips.

I found all the pieces that I wrote about you, the factual, the mythical, the imagined, and the experienced. I kept it all, like a hardened archaelogist.Until last night. Last night, I let go of your remaining fossils in my life.

I loved you until I had to stop because I meant nothing to you. I was a melting bug on your windscreen, as you raced past me to reach your husband. You lied to me. I drank up to ease the pain. You told me that you had been hurt too much and you could never trust anyone again. I was foolish enough to think that that was the truth. I just was a bug, not a lover to you.

You taught me that to love is to believe and create and wait and hope and listen and give. The classroom was the time spent together, where I played no games and spun no lies. I did everything I could to bond with you. When I graduated, I made you a small book, filled with our words, memories, your face, and my love. I found that book the other day. I uncovered that heart I used to have, the heart whose teeth were cut on your rejection.

Yeah. Hindsight’s knowledge would have told me then that you were never into me. I’m glad you weren’t. You would have left me when I would have committed to you further. All my love, as innocent and child-like as it was, was never returned or valued then.

Here’s the twist. That heart I found? I didn’t lament over its death and push its coffin back underneath my bed.I took it out and placed it again deep behind my ribs. I’m quiet with resolve that I will be that guy again.I will love again and make libraries out of this healing heart.